I bought the late-2012 Macbook Pro Retina for $1200 with a 3rd generation 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 8 GB of ram, and 265 GB of space for $1200. While the laptop is great, for $1,699 it's extremely overpriced so getting a discounted price is really worthwhile. I did have some performance and heat/noise issue especially when I was doing heavy video editing. I usually use Photoshop for photo editing and found that while performance was well, my battery dropped to as little as 4 hours or so and there was definitely noticeable heat issues and an occasional whirring sound can be heard. However, I don;t have that many regrets. For $1200, it's a great laptop and considering it was the first laptop of its kind with its amazing screen, I think Apple did a pretty good jobs even if it could improve on some aspects. Personally, I am going to be selling this soon and getting the second-generation 13" Retina Pro. Although, this is something I would recommend to someone who does mainly photo editing and the occasional video editing. I also found that this laptop could handle 25-30 tabs in Chrome easily. If you want a retina quality screen and don't mind a less-than-ideal battery life and some heat/noise issue check out a third-party site to get this laptop because their pricing is probably a lot better and appropriate considering its issues. In short, I'd recommend but it all depend on how you use it. If you need an all-day battery life or intense editing or gaming, get the 15" Retina or something else.
*Edit: To expand your usable screen, just go to Settings or get a plugin and SwitchResX and increase the screen resolution. The default usable screen space is a disappointment but you can easily change it it. Fortunately (and contrary to Apple's warning) the battery life doesn't seem to be affected by a screen resolution change.
The Breakdown
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Design
10
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Keyboard
10
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Touchpad
10
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Display
10
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Performance
10
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Heat / noise
7
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Battery life
7
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Software
10
Show the rest of this review and the breakdown
